Tagging Alerts

Giving Your Alerts Useful Nicknames at Birth

When RightITnow ECM encounters a new IT Ops event, it applies a series of rules to it that helps you deal with it in the most efficient way possible. These rules may deduplicate the event or create an new alert based on the event. One of the rule types is a tag rule that you can use to tag the event and corresponding alert with nicknames (keywords) that you can use to analyze alerts data without changing your data model or topology.

What IT Ops Tag Rules Do

A tag rule updates the Tags column in the Alerts table to the value specified in the rule. When building a tag rule, you name and describe the rule, choose the connector and build conditions like you do for any other type of rule, but you can also select multiple tags to add or remove should the conditions of the rule be met. For example, For example, you could write a rule that if the event message contains the word, “postfix” or “sendmail,” then set the Tags column value to “email:”

This way, operators can search the Tag column for email issues more easily.

Special Tagging Features to Enhance Business Service Management

You can add a new action, Evaluate Tag Rules, to the Alert Console Context menu so that you can re-evaluate tag rules on alerts directly from the Alert Console Context menu. This allows you to re-tag the alert should another process have touch and changed the alert. You can also add or remove multiple tags at once. When executing the tag rules on incoming alerts, if the rule removes tags, it will only remove tags that were added via the event token “tag” or by another tag rule. This is executed before the alert is stored in the database, so tags that are already in the database (previously added) will not be removed.

Enhanced IT Ops Business Service Management Sans Database and Topology Changes

Tags allow you to analyze and manipulate your IT Ops alert data without changing your data model or topology, which are much more disruptive and costly changes. For example, given the correct corresponding tag rules, you could use the Tags column to quickly find all “Disk Full” or “Server Down” conditions in “Boston” without touching your database or re-arranging your entity topology. This enables you Operators to concentrate on resolving the issues rather than mining the data for the issues.

Alert Management

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The implementation of ECM has had a the desired effect of reducing the load on our Servicedesk staff thereby allowing us to deliver cost effective improvements to our capability.
We are now handling an estate in excess of 10,000 services with considerably reduced strain on our staff and processes.

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